My Name Is Why by Lemn Sissay

Seven of our group met to discuss this book and did so uninterrupted for well over 40 minutes. Thank you Zoom!

This was an emotionally challenging story to read and, sadly, it's a factual account of Lemn's own childhood spent in the 'care' of his local authority. 

Lemn takes the reader through the files given to him by Wigan council in 2015: his files. He shares the reports and correspondence relating to his entire childhood from 1967 to 1985: 18 years. And he explains in detail the circumstances surrounding the documents. He changes no names. 

We talked around the story for a long time and yet it was a struggle for any of us to put into words how we felt about our reading experience. So this is a very short summary of our discussion. 

"Extremely frustrated for Lemn"; "So cross at the system". "Unbelievable". "I couldn't do anything". These are just words, and they do not really define how it feels to learn that authority took a child and condemned him to a life of bureaucratic decision making by arrogant white men in suits. And then there is the foster family Lemn lived with until he was 12, who let him down so very badly. There are no words for something we cannot even begin to understand. 

For Lemn though words, in poetry, gave him a way to express himself and shape himself and led him to where he is now. At the end of this book the reader is treated to just a few of his poems - don't put the book down until you have read them and read them again. 

The book ended but we want to know more. Here is a bit more:

Click on the link below for a post-publication discussion in which Lemn Sissay tells Alan Yentob what it was like to grow up as the only black child in a sleepy market town outside Wigan in the 1970s.

Imagine - an interview with Lemn Sissay

Would we recommend this book? Yes, it's a short read that is easier to read than to explain what it is like to read. It is powerful. 

You can't help but fall in love with Lemn Sissay -  his talent and his intelligence and his determination has led to him becoming an incredible asset to the country that so badly let him down. 

Our next book is: The Pants of Perspective by Anna McNuff and we will meet to discuss her travel adventures on at 8pm on Thursday February 18th 2021, almost certainly by Zoom.  

I hope you all manage to enjoy what will be an unusual Christmas and New Year.

Book choices for the start of, what we will hope will be, a much better year!

 The Peculiar Miracles of Antoinette Martin by Stepanie Knipper

In the spirit of Vanessa Diffenbaugh’s The Language of Flowers--and with a touch of the magical--The Peculiar Miracles of Antoinette Martin is a spellbinding debut about a wondrously gifted child and the family that she helps to heal.  

Sisters Rose and Lily Martin were inseparable when growing up on their family’s Kentucky flower farm yet became distant as adults when Lily found herself unable to deal with the demands of Rose’s unusual daughter. But when Rose becomes ill, Lily is forced to return to the farm and to confront the fears that had driven her away.

Rose’s daughter, ten-year-old Antoinette, has a form of autism that requires constant care and attention. She has never spoken a word, but she has a powerful gift that others would give anything to harness--she can heal with her touch. She brings wilted flowers back to life, makes a neighbor’s tremors disappear, and even changes the course of nature on the flower farm.

Antoinette’s gift, though, comes at a price, since each healing puts her own life in jeopardy. As Rose--the center of her daughter’s life--struggles with her own failing health and Lily confronts her anguished past, the sisters, and the men who love them, come to realize the sacrifices that must be made to keep this very special child safe.

Written with great heart and a deep understanding of what it feels like to be different, The Peculiar Miracles of Antoinette Martin is a novel about what it means to be family and about the lengths to which people will go to protect the ones they love.

Eight Hundred Grapes by Laura Dave

There are secrets you share, and secrets you hide…

Growing up on her family’s Sonoma vineyard, Georgia Ford learned some important secrets. The secret number of grapes it takes to make a bottle of wine: eight hundred. The secret ingredient in her mother’s lasagna: chocolate. The secret behind ending a fight: hold hands.

But just a week before her wedding, thirty-year-old Georgia discovers her beloved fiancé has been keeping a secret so explosive, it will change their lives forever.

Georgia does what she’s always done: she returns to the family vineyard, expecting the comfort of her long-married parents, and her brothers, and everything familiar. But it turns out her fiancé is not the only one who’s been keeping secrets…

The Pants of Perspective by Anna McNuff

"When I ran, I ran for pleasure. I didn’t run for times, to win, to impress: I ran for me. When I ran my bum cheeks rubbed together, so much so that if I was going on a long run I’d have to ‘lube up’. I maintained that I was not a ‘real’ runner – I just liked to run so that I could eat cake." Anna was never anything like those ‘real’ runners on telly – all spindly limbs, tiny shorts and split times – but when she read about New Zealand’s 3,000-kilometre-long Te Araroa Trail, she began to wonder… perhaps being a ‘real’ runner was overrated. Maybe she could just run it anyway? Travelling alone through New Zealand’s backcountry for 148 days, she scrambled through forests, along ridge-lines, over mountain passes, along beaches and across swollen rivers. Running up to 52 kilometres in a day, she slept wild most nights, and was taken into the homes and hearts of the kiwi people in between. The Pants of Perspective is a witty, colourful and at times painfully raw account of a journey to the edge of what a woman believes herself to be capable of. It is a coming-of-age story which will lead you on a roller coaster ride through fear, vulnerability, courage and failure. For anyone who has ever dreamt of taking on a great challenge, but felt too afraid to begin – this story is for you.

We will meet to discuss our current book: My Name is Why by Lemn Sissay, and perhaps a little festive chat and tipple! at 8pm on 17th December by Zoom.